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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On April 05 2016 03:54 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2016 03:15 puerk wrote:liberal in what sense? he was a prussian militarist through and through he was extremely conservative and pretty harsh against liberals and social democrates instituting social insurances as policy was his last ditch effort to placate the masses and hold on to power, it failed as it was easily seen through and he later had to resign because of mounting pressure Mein Gedanke war, die arbeitenden Klassen zu gewinnen, oder soll ich sagen zu bestechen, den Staat als soziale Einrichtung anzusehen, die ihretwegen besteht und für ihr Wohl sorgen möchte or for you: My thought was, to win over the working class[es] - or should i say to bribe them to see the state as a social institution, which exists for them and is advancing their welfare he was exactly the cynic conservative giving the masses a bone not careing about them His very first actions at first minister was to firm up the left in a culture struggle against the church. Its the reason why you don't need to get married at a church anymore but can just sign papers at a justice of the peace. Granted the great depression came and he was forced to go to the new centrist party with the Catholics in order to hold the nation together but even before that he heavily supported liberal parties in western Europe. That quote shows that he believes that the state is a social institution and that he just needs to convince the working classes to believe him on that. He used the welfare state to fight the socialists (which were the old time scary kind that advocated for collectivization) which he started bulling 7 years before he got kicked out, hardly a last ditch effort. And finally Bismark is the epitome of a guy who wants peace, He created the holy alliance to ensure continental stability for a generation. Granted the polish lost but they would have lost more in a war. And finaly his decisions in dealing with the wars against austria and france showed restraint in his prosecution of them, refusing to be embroiled in along war or deal with a reactionary war years later. this balance of peace was able to hold long after he left office far into 1914 and WW1 which he specifically warned against.
What he did after 1870 was basically equivalent to the versailles treaty. So I don't know how he showed restraint ? Because he only asked five billions francs (two more than what the army asked) indemnity and took two regions ?
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Charles Koch is confident House Speaker Paul Ryan could emerge from the Republican National Convention as the party’s nominee if Donald Trump comes up at least 100 delegates shy, he has told friends privately.
Koch believes Ryan would be a “shoo-in” at a contested convention, should the campaign get to that point. Though Koch’s wealth gives him significant influence within the Republican Party, it does not necessarily translate into skill in political prognostication. Still, he and his brother David are fond of Ryan. As a source close to the brothers told The Huffington Post, they appreciate the agenda he has pursued as speaker, including opposition to tax extenders and heightened warnings against corporate welfare — positions that contrast with the admittedly vague portfolio pushed by Donald Trump.
One source close to Ryan said he would only be interested in it if the party could unite behind him, a scenario he can’t envision. “I don’t know what to tell you? He doesn’t want the nomination. And can you imagine the backlash from the Trump forces if someone who didn’t run for president wins the nomination? It would be complete chaos,” he said.
A second source close to the Koch brothers said he wasn’t aware of a conversation about Ryan, but it didn’t surprise him.
Source
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United States42693 Posts
Ryan isn't stupid enough to drink from that poisoned chalice.
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On April 05 2016 01:12 kwizach wrote:
He's purposely not being specific, as I already explained at length several times. The point is that his attacks against her are not simply attacks against "the system" and the average political official, with Hillary simply being the face of these attacks. He is attacking her specifically using innuendos that don't apply to others. For example about her paid speeches, and recently about the Clinton Foundation. I didn't mention Obama in my last post because I already made my point, and your rebuttal was basically you saying that it made sense from his campaign's perspective not to attack Obama - well duh, obviously, but that doesn't change the fact that he's precisely painting her as a special case and deliberately avoiding any mention of Obama so as not to undermine his own case. You didn't refute my point at all - you actually supported it.
A pretty heavy backtrack. From your earlier posts, I've learned that he was attacking her specifically, saying that she's more corrupt than other people in the system. Now I'm learning that he's using specific cases of corruption allegations that pertain to her. That doesn't imply that others in the system are less corrupt, that's just focusing specifically on the case of her corruption. The point about Obama isn't that it makes sense from his campaign's perspective not to attack him (even though a post of yours necessitated that answer, despite the duh today) the point was that his willingness to give Obama a pass was exactly that, a pass to Obama for being Obama, and not a pass to non-Clinton characters for not being Clinton, as you were trying to paint it as earlier.
On April 05 2016 01:12 kwizach wrote:
I know that Sanders is not saying that he himself is representative of the system, that is what I just wrote and that is the point. Since Sanders is indeed not saying that he himself is guilty of the same things as others in the system, it means that being in the system does not automatically mean that you're under the influence of "big money". This means, as I just explained in the post you replied to, that his initial attacks about the system did not contain the same claims about Hillary as his attacks against her now do, precisely because he had not started painting her as someone guilty of what he's denouncing and under the influence of reprehensible industries.
It was still possible at the start that Hillary would be one of the people not directly under the influence of those industries, because he wasn't targeting her directly the way he's doing now.
Which is why I didn't only mention his attacks against the system, but also coupled it with another notion that he has always been pulling for, that Hillary IS representative of the system, will maintain the status quo, and make it so that nothing changes as opposed to his "revolution" stance. All of that was in there from the start, and was in my argument from the start. Come on now.
Consider for a second that you're saying that in Sanders' original argument, the corrupt establishment is pulling for Clinton as the candidate to represent them, but there is nothing wrong with Clinton herself. I guess the establishment gets tired of being corrupt and decides to choose someone who would fight against the system as opposed to maintain it. Which makes the whole concept of a revolution pointless, as the system is already fixing itself, so he is now running against the solution to the problem he's running on. But hey, it doesn't seem to bother you that it makes no sense, so I guess we can continue to pretend the version you're presenting now is somehow equivalent to something as elaborate as the notion that when someone is representative of a problem, they are part of the problem.
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I want Ryan to run because it would be the final expression of arrogance that broke the base's back. You can tell Koch sees the base as an enemy that needs to be wrestled into submission. He does not see their concerns as legitimate. I think this philosophy will ultimately tear the party apart.
I also don't see how republicans are totally fine with the Koch brothers. No one should want their party so clearly catering to a single family.
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Sermokala may i ask again, what is your source of knowledge about germany? it looks totally twisted.
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I love that this election is slowly dispelling the illusion that the primary system is anything but vague weather vain for the general election. That if the public can’t pick, the party is just going to do whatever the fuck it wants.
Its also forcing everyone to look at obscure rules like that do some delegates are released if the candidate doesn’t pledge loyalty to the party. Its fun times and a good reminder to the public how these parties really function.
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Pretty sure the party just kind of cobbled that process together and decided it looked good enough for something that would probably would never be used.
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On April 05 2016 02:56 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2016 01:16 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 05 2016 00:09 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 23:31 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 04 2016 23:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 22:59 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 04 2016 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 14:57 ticklishmusic wrote:
You keep drawing parallels between different situations. There's winkwink nudgenudge stuff going on with coordination b/w a campaign and SuperPACs, but it's very different from campaign donations. You can track the money pretty clearly and if the FEC thought there was anything going on there, they would run an audit. You seem to again be engaging with an argument you don't understand/I'm not making. What I was showing is that Hillary legally circumvents FEC contribution laws by exploiting this loophole (or whatever one wants to call it). On top of that she brags about it as "supporting Democrats down ticket" even while the WP rightly suggests she's the one benefiting from this (and DWS, as it's being used to pay off DNC debt). Before the Hillary Victory Fund, the money she is receiving directly from the Hillary Victory Fund would of had to go to a superPAC or at least stay within the DNC, as it would be in excess of the $2,700 limit for candidates. I was attempting to show you what that means. Let's try again this way. By those donors giving a $300k check to her at an event, then her handing it to her campaign staff, then her campaign staff handing the check to her HVF staff (in at least one case, that's the same person), the HVF staff can then legally hand the check back to Hillary to spend however she pleases. Which is precisely what I just showed you, with pictures and everything.* Are you refuting that it's happening or are you trying to say that because it's legal that I should use different words to describe it? EDIT: *I hope you realize that's a simplification. Obviously they have to do the normal accounting for donations but I used the check to illustrate the absurdity of it. No, she can't, and you're writing fiction about a non-existent loophole. As I said before, the source and amount of donations are tracked. Because of that, there is a money trail that is very easy to follow for the FEC, which has all these records. She can't pump money into her campaign by breaking the max, unless you're suggesting that she's taking big chunks of money and committing fraud by breaking it up into smaller fake donations. It would be stupid and blatantly obvious, and looking at it Hillary really doesn't need the money right now. There is no evidence and no real motive. There could be better separation of powers between HVF since it's embedded in the Clinton campaign. However, I'm sure that it has been properly firewalled off, and it definitely has financial controls like separate accounts at a minimum. The worst violation I see is the campaign overallocating expenses to the fund for stuff like salary, though then you get into shades of grey like "HVF duties make up 20% of this employee's responsibilities (however that is defined), but they are being paid 40% out of the fund which is improper etc. etc." How... Ill try to say this very simply. The HVA can give Hillary as much money as it wants, see that they have already given her $4 million+. She can raise money for the HVA. So instead of writing a $33k dollar check to Hillary's campaign, they write it to the HVA. The HVA takes it and divides it. The first chunk fills the FEC limit to Hillary. The next chunk gets dumped into the HVA. The HVA piles up those donations, then hands them back to Hillary to spend as if they were standard campaign donations. So they aren't added to the maxed out total of the person who gave the HVA and Hillary money, instead they are counted as coming from HVA even though HVA was just serving as a pass-through for the donation that the Hillary campaign can't legally accept directly from the original donor. Her campaign staff is the HVA staff, the treasurer is the COO of her campaign. So yes it's all legal with separate accounts and such, that was never my point although you seem insistent on arguing that instead of what I am telling you. As for the tracking, there's several reasons why you can't find anything showing you how much money the Hillary campaign, of the ~$23M they raised last month, or any other month for that matter, came from the HVA. But again that would just be for us, as I've already said several times, there's nothing the FEC could do anyway because using the HVF as a pass through for large donations (while pretty unethical and not great PR) is totally legal. Is that not clear enough? And how is the HVF piling money together and putting it into the Hillary campaign's general funds without it being illegal and obvious? Because it would be both illegal and obvious. Money is tracked and moving it through a couple different hands doesn't change the original source or magically exempt it from limits. If Soros gives 353K and it's moved through the HVF it doesn't magically become magical money that magically appeared in the HVF account-- money is fungible, but the amounts are accounted for. A money trail can be hidden in laundering cases because an auditor does not have all the financial docs, but the FEC does have all the financial docs. If campaigns were companies, they'd be the most financially transparent on Earth, they basically publish their general ledgers every month. No one cares about this because it's a non-issue built on a misunderstanding of accounting and campaign finance. Let's try it this way. Let's look at the Clooney dinner. The "fundraising expenses" can be paid by the HVF as it's actually their event (they being Hillary's Campaign staff) instead of the Clinton Campaign paying the expenses, which do you think her staff chooses? Tadaa, you've turned Soros $300k check into paying for a Clooney fundraiser for your campaign, and it's all legal. Sure, and the money from that fundraiser goes to HVF. The first $2700 goes to the Clinton campaign as allowed but the vast majority goes to state parties and the DNC. None of us know how expenses are allocated-- perhaps the Clinton campaign itself pays a proportion in line with the percentage of proceeds they get from their general accounts and the HVF accounts pay the rest, and/or Clinton makes an "in kind" contribution to account for her campaign's portion of expense instead of putting in cash. It's a two birds one stone/ everyone wins scenario where Clinton raises a bunch of money for herself and the party. God forbid, Clinton has raised money for those downballot candidates. Your argument has gone from Clinton is laundering 300K donations through HVF to the HVF uses HVF funds to pay for HVF events... and Clinton potentially, maybe generates some benefits from it. It was all perfectly legal, and at worst Hillary has avoided spending a little cash in this particular scenario. You're now making a mountain out of a molehill which we're not even sure is really there. this is about big money in politics. I assume by your posts that you don't care about the top 1 percent controlling out elections but GH does. Thats why its a big deal. yes its perfectly legal loopholes but you have to agree that there is some reason this money is being donated, even if its a "gee I like you so much I'll give you hundreds of thousands of dollars".
Will money get into politics no matter what rules we give them otherwise? Yes.
Would money in politics not matter if more people voted? Yes.
Would money in politics not matter if it was encouraged and made fully visible? Yes.
If you want to affect which politicians are in power--vote. The only thing big money does is advertise more. If people always voted their minds anyway then no amount of advertisement would change it.
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On April 05 2016 04:11 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2016 01:12 kwizach wrote:
He's purposely not being specific, as I already explained at length several times. The point is that his attacks against her are not simply attacks against "the system" and the average political official, with Hillary simply being the face of these attacks. He is attacking her specifically using innuendos that don't apply to others. For example about her paid speeches, and recently about the Clinton Foundation. I didn't mention Obama in my last post because I already made my point, and your rebuttal was basically you saying that it made sense from his campaign's perspective not to attack Obama - well duh, obviously, but that doesn't change the fact that he's precisely painting her as a special case and deliberately avoiding any mention of Obama so as not to undermine his own case. You didn't refute my point at all - you actually supported it. A pretty heavy backtrack. From your earlier posts, I've learned that he was attacking her specifically, saying that she's more corrupt than other people in the system. Now I'm learning that he's using specific cases of corruption allegations that pertain to her. That doesn't imply that others in the system are less corrupt, that's just focusing specifically on the case of her corruption. The point about Obama isn't that it makes sense from his campaign's perspective not to attack him (even though a post of yours necessitated that answer, despite the duh today) the point was that his willingness to give Obama a pass was exactly that, a pass to Obama for being Obama, and not a pass to non-Clinton characters for not being Clinton, as you were trying to paint it as earlier.
There's no backtrack except in your imagination. My point, from the start, has been that Sanders has gone beyond simply painting Clinton as the face of an establishment involving pretty much anyone in Congress but Sanders himself, and has indeed attacked her specifically in the ways that I explained. It's not simply "the establishment is bad, and by the way Hillary is part of the establishment". There was a change in his attacks, going personal, and new content to accompany the switch. That content was not part of his earlier railing against money in politics. You were wrong.
No post of mine necessitated any clarification of the type about Obama. Like I've said repeatedly, Sanders is not mentioning Obama because Obama is "guilty" of receiving even more donations from Wall Street & the oil industry, meaning that his dishonest innuendos against Clinton would fall apart if people realized that there's really nothing separating her from Obama in this regard -- someone they see as trustworthy. Sanders is thus avoiding any mention of the president on this front, in order to paint Clinton as something more than simply "another member of the establishment", by insinuating that she in particular is guilty of particularly outrageous backroom deals with Wall Street and the oil industry. Like I said, it goes beyond a general denunciation of a system of whom Clinton would simply be one representative among others as Obama.
On April 05 2016 04:11 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2016 01:12 kwizach wrote:
I know that Sanders is not saying that he himself is representative of the system, that is what I just wrote and that is the point. Since Sanders is indeed not saying that he himself is guilty of the same things as others in the system, it means that being in the system does not automatically mean that you're under the influence of "big money". This means, as I just explained in the post you replied to, that his initial attacks about the system did not contain the same claims about Hillary as his attacks against her now do, precisely because he had not started painting her as someone guilty of what he's denouncing and under the influence of reprehensible industries.
It was still possible at the start that Hillary would be one of the people not directly under the influence of those industries, because he wasn't targeting her directly the way he's doing now. Which is why I didn't only mention his attacks against the system, but also coupled it with another notion that he has always been pulling for, that Hillary IS representative of the system, will maintain the status quo, and make it so that nothing changes as opposed to his "revolution" stance. All of that was in there from the start, and was in my argument from the start. Come on now. Consider for a second that you're saying that in Sanders' original argument, the corrupt establishment is pulling for Clinton as the candidate to represent them, but there is nothing wrong with Clinton herself. I guess the establishment gets tired of being corrupt and decides to choose someone who would fight against the system as opposed to maintain it. Which makes the whole concept of a revolution pointless, as the system is already fixing itself, so he is now running against the solution to the problem he's running on. But hey, it doesn't seem to bother you that it makes no sense, so I guess we can continue to pretend the version you're presenting now is somehow equivalent to something as elaborate as the notion that when someone is representative of a problem, they are part of the problem.
Sanders' attacks against Clinton were not there from the start. This is factually false. It is a lie that you are pushing. The same kind of attacks simply were not there initially. And an indictment of "the system" is not the same as an indictment of every individual in the system. And with regards to the nature of the attacks, you're completely ignoring the fact that 1. Sanders disagrees - let me quote the NY Times article:
Mr. Sanders’s advisers urged him to challenge Mrs. Clinton over accepting $675,000 from Goldman Sachs for delivering three speeches, according to two Sanders advisers. They thought the speaking fees meshed with the senator’s message about Wall Street excess and a rigged America. But Mr. Sanders, hunched over a U-shaped conference table, rejected it as a personal attack on Mrs. Clinton’s income — the sort of character assault he has long opposed. She has the right to make money, he offered.
Clearly, Sanders was making a big distinction here, and treating Clinton's speaking fees as something different from the kind of corruption that he was talking about, and not treating it as an illustration of the latter. In addition, 2. Sanders' advisers disagree as well as is also documented in the article, and 3. observers and analysts have reported extensively on the change of tone and on the different nature of Sanders' discourse and of his attacks on Clinton. So, to sum up, here are the facts:
1. Sanders is going beyond simply painting Clinton as the face of the establishment. He is pushing attacks that are not simply akin to personifying his initial general stance against the system on a random member of the establishment. He is actively pushing the idea that there is something particularly wrong with Clinton when it comes to corruption.
2. Sanders' discourse did not originally contain the kind of attacks against Clinton that were introduced later.
3. Sanders has therefore introduced new content in his discourse.
And that content is dishonest, misleading, and even false when you take it as a claim that Clinton is corrupt (which it is).
Another good article on the evolution of Sanders' campaign. Hopefully after NY he goes back to a positive tone with regards to Clinton and the Democratic party.
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For Sanders supporters, how well does Clinton need to do in New York for your hope to be lost? I donated $100 to Sanders because I believe in him projecting his message and I wanted to support someone stabbing the idea of campaign finance. I feel like my money has been well spent. He has massively shifted this country's conversation in very positive (overall) ways. However, if he loses New York, continued attacks on Clinton are just silliness. I donated money because I felt like he is mainly doing this to change dialogue in our country. I would say that has for sure been accomplished.
And the fact of the matter is, I am but one of many viewpoints in my party. It is not reasonable for me to demand Sanders be my president. There are such wildly differing views in our country that I really don't think it is reasonable to ask for a candidate that feels like such a perfect fit. Being a part of a democracy means you will never get everything you want. There are too many other viewpoints to get that.
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To be clear, I do care about money making it so some people have louder voices in politics than others. However, this is a pretty dumb part to argue about it, and I note the argument has receded from accusations of outright money laundering to "well maybe she benefits financially in some indirect manner". It does kind of follow the past pattern of attacks against her, so it's nothing new under the sun here.
These people were almost certainly gonna give Hillary 2700 bucks. She manages to get the DNC an extra 300K from them-- maybe they would have donated to a couple races in their state, but this lets the DNC pick up all the ammo they can from each source. That's a great move in my book. Each dinner table is enough funds for the entire campaign of a senator or rep. That money is going there any ways, so why not go out and push for a downballot candidate you like to get that $$$?
There is a fundamental tension between donations, motives and all that. It's a murky ball. However, it's not so cut and dried that George Soros gives a bunch of money to progressive causes he must be directly benefiting as a businessman and that it is to the detriment of many others. Maybe he cares about progressive causes. Maybe he believes that a more progressive USA will be better for business in the long term. Maybe he care about people. No one knows their motivations, but the Democratic party is a big tent and guys like him are in it. I do not personally directly benefit from many proposals I support, like publicly funded abortion, LGBTQ rights, etc. I could do fine as we are with my education, straightness and a high paying white collar job and minimal tax burden due to doing taxes properly. But I care about making America a better place, even if it means I have to pay higher taxes and pay a little more for healthcare. There is more than short-term self interest driving people in elections, and this is not a zero sum game.
Allocating expenses in these situations is not an exact science. As with my earlier example of an employee who has duties for both the campaign and HVF, how do you determine what percent of her work goes to one or the other? Do you use time? The number of people she oversees? Her responsibilities? You can define and allocate things in a variety of reasonable ways that are perfectly aboveboard. I do this sort of thing as part of my job. My company does joint ventures with other groups, and we negotiate for ownership interests and structure, how much each side contributes and in what form contributions are made and a million other things like that.
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On April 05 2016 04:25 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2016 02:56 Sermokala wrote:On April 05 2016 01:16 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 05 2016 00:09 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 23:31 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 04 2016 23:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 22:59 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 04 2016 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 14:57 ticklishmusic wrote:
You keep drawing parallels between different situations. There's winkwink nudgenudge stuff going on with coordination b/w a campaign and SuperPACs, but it's very different from campaign donations. You can track the money pretty clearly and if the FEC thought there was anything going on there, they would run an audit. You seem to again be engaging with an argument you don't understand/I'm not making. What I was showing is that Hillary legally circumvents FEC contribution laws by exploiting this loophole (or whatever one wants to call it). On top of that she brags about it as "supporting Democrats down ticket" even while the WP rightly suggests she's the one benefiting from this (and DWS, as it's being used to pay off DNC debt). Before the Hillary Victory Fund, the money she is receiving directly from the Hillary Victory Fund would of had to go to a superPAC or at least stay within the DNC, as it would be in excess of the $2,700 limit for candidates. I was attempting to show you what that means. Let's try again this way. By those donors giving a $300k check to her at an event, then her handing it to her campaign staff, then her campaign staff handing the check to her HVF staff (in at least one case, that's the same person), the HVF staff can then legally hand the check back to Hillary to spend however she pleases. Which is precisely what I just showed you, with pictures and everything.* Are you refuting that it's happening or are you trying to say that because it's legal that I should use different words to describe it? EDIT: *I hope you realize that's a simplification. Obviously they have to do the normal accounting for donations but I used the check to illustrate the absurdity of it. No, she can't, and you're writing fiction about a non-existent loophole. As I said before, the source and amount of donations are tracked. Because of that, there is a money trail that is very easy to follow for the FEC, which has all these records. She can't pump money into her campaign by breaking the max, unless you're suggesting that she's taking big chunks of money and committing fraud by breaking it up into smaller fake donations. It would be stupid and blatantly obvious, and looking at it Hillary really doesn't need the money right now. There is no evidence and no real motive. There could be better separation of powers between HVF since it's embedded in the Clinton campaign. However, I'm sure that it has been properly firewalled off, and it definitely has financial controls like separate accounts at a minimum. The worst violation I see is the campaign overallocating expenses to the fund for stuff like salary, though then you get into shades of grey like "HVF duties make up 20% of this employee's responsibilities (however that is defined), but they are being paid 40% out of the fund which is improper etc. etc." How... Ill try to say this very simply. The HVA can give Hillary as much money as it wants, see that they have already given her $4 million+. She can raise money for the HVA. So instead of writing a $33k dollar check to Hillary's campaign, they write it to the HVA. The HVA takes it and divides it. The first chunk fills the FEC limit to Hillary. The next chunk gets dumped into the HVA. The HVA piles up those donations, then hands them back to Hillary to spend as if they were standard campaign donations. So they aren't added to the maxed out total of the person who gave the HVA and Hillary money, instead they are counted as coming from HVA even though HVA was just serving as a pass-through for the donation that the Hillary campaign can't legally accept directly from the original donor. Her campaign staff is the HVA staff, the treasurer is the COO of her campaign. So yes it's all legal with separate accounts and such, that was never my point although you seem insistent on arguing that instead of what I am telling you. As for the tracking, there's several reasons why you can't find anything showing you how much money the Hillary campaign, of the ~$23M they raised last month, or any other month for that matter, came from the HVA. But again that would just be for us, as I've already said several times, there's nothing the FEC could do anyway because using the HVF as a pass through for large donations (while pretty unethical and not great PR) is totally legal. Is that not clear enough? And how is the HVF piling money together and putting it into the Hillary campaign's general funds without it being illegal and obvious? Because it would be both illegal and obvious. Money is tracked and moving it through a couple different hands doesn't change the original source or magically exempt it from limits. If Soros gives 353K and it's moved through the HVF it doesn't magically become magical money that magically appeared in the HVF account-- money is fungible, but the amounts are accounted for. A money trail can be hidden in laundering cases because an auditor does not have all the financial docs, but the FEC does have all the financial docs. If campaigns were companies, they'd be the most financially transparent on Earth, they basically publish their general ledgers every month. No one cares about this because it's a non-issue built on a misunderstanding of accounting and campaign finance. Let's try it this way. Let's look at the Clooney dinner. The "fundraising expenses" can be paid by the HVF as it's actually their event (they being Hillary's Campaign staff) instead of the Clinton Campaign paying the expenses, which do you think her staff chooses? Tadaa, you've turned Soros $300k check into paying for a Clooney fundraiser for your campaign, and it's all legal. Sure, and the money from that fundraiser goes to HVF. The first $2700 goes to the Clinton campaign as allowed but the vast majority goes to state parties and the DNC. None of us know how expenses are allocated-- perhaps the Clinton campaign itself pays a proportion in line with the percentage of proceeds they get from their general accounts and the HVF accounts pay the rest, and/or Clinton makes an "in kind" contribution to account for her campaign's portion of expense instead of putting in cash. It's a two birds one stone/ everyone wins scenario where Clinton raises a bunch of money for herself and the party. God forbid, Clinton has raised money for those downballot candidates. Your argument has gone from Clinton is laundering 300K donations through HVF to the HVF uses HVF funds to pay for HVF events... and Clinton potentially, maybe generates some benefits from it. It was all perfectly legal, and at worst Hillary has avoided spending a little cash in this particular scenario. You're now making a mountain out of a molehill which we're not even sure is really there. this is about big money in politics. I assume by your posts that you don't care about the top 1 percent controlling out elections but GH does. Thats why its a big deal. yes its perfectly legal loopholes but you have to agree that there is some reason this money is being donated, even if its a "gee I like you so much I'll give you hundreds of thousands of dollars". Will money get into politics no matter what rules we give them otherwise? Yes. Would money in politics not matter if more people voted? Yes. Would money in politics not matter if it was encouraged and made fully visible? Yes. If you want to affect which politicians are in power--vote. The only thing big money does is advertise more. If people always voted their minds anyway then no amount of advertisement would change it.
Sure if every eligible voter is perfectly engaged and perfectly knowledgeable, we don't need to about care how people campaign for office. GH's point is pretty strenuous at best, but your arguments has little value in the real word.
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On April 05 2016 04:00 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2016 03:54 Sermokala wrote:On April 05 2016 03:15 puerk wrote:liberal in what sense? he was a prussian militarist through and through he was extremely conservative and pretty harsh against liberals and social democrates instituting social insurances as policy was his last ditch effort to placate the masses and hold on to power, it failed as it was easily seen through and he later had to resign because of mounting pressure Mein Gedanke war, die arbeitenden Klassen zu gewinnen, oder soll ich sagen zu bestechen, den Staat als soziale Einrichtung anzusehen, die ihretwegen besteht und für ihr Wohl sorgen möchte or for you: My thought was, to win over the working class[es] - or should i say to bribe them to see the state as a social institution, which exists for them and is advancing their welfare he was exactly the cynic conservative giving the masses a bone not careing about them His very first actions at first minister was to firm up the left in a culture struggle against the church. Its the reason why you don't need to get married at a church anymore but can just sign papers at a justice of the peace. Granted the great depression came and he was forced to go to the new centrist party with the Catholics in order to hold the nation together but even before that he heavily supported liberal parties in western Europe. That quote shows that he believes that the state is a social institution and that he just needs to convince the working classes to believe him on that. He used the welfare state to fight the socialists (which were the old time scary kind that advocated for collectivization) which he started bulling 7 years before he got kicked out, hardly a last ditch effort. And finally Bismark is the epitome of a guy who wants peace, He created the holy alliance to ensure continental stability for a generation. Granted the polish lost but they would have lost more in a war. And finaly his decisions in dealing with the wars against austria and france showed restraint in his prosecution of them, refusing to be embroiled in along war or deal with a reactionary war years later. this balance of peace was able to hold long after he left office far into 1914 and WW1 which he specifically warned against. What he did after 1870 was basically equivalent to the versailles treaty. So I don't know how he showed restraint ? Because he only asked five billions francs (two more than what the army asked) indemnity and took two regions ?
The difference is the nations had the capability to pay that money instead of after a 4 year war like in ww1. Reperations wasn't anything new before bismark and it only ended after it was such a disaster in ww1.
On April 05 2016 04:13 puerk wrote:
Sermokala may i ask again, what is your source of knowledge about germany? it looks totally twisted.
I read books about German unification and the post Napoleonic Europe. what about it do you think is twisted? I thought if anyone a German would appreciate Bismark, but I guess its the same as brits and thatcher.
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And there are people in asia that think Germans would/should appreciate Hitler.....
thats the trouble with outside perspectives on history
inside the german mindset, Bismark was more like a necessary evil, and in his militaristic conservative views a product of his time, not a great reformer or liberal thinker
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On April 05 2016 05:30 ragz_gt wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2016 04:25 Naracs_Duc wrote:On April 05 2016 02:56 Sermokala wrote:On April 05 2016 01:16 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 05 2016 00:09 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 23:31 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 04 2016 23:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 22:59 ticklishmusic wrote:On April 04 2016 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 04 2016 14:57 ticklishmusic wrote:
You keep drawing parallels between different situations. There's winkwink nudgenudge stuff going on with coordination b/w a campaign and SuperPACs, but it's very different from campaign donations. You can track the money pretty clearly and if the FEC thought there was anything going on there, they would run an audit. You seem to again be engaging with an argument you don't understand/I'm not making. What I was showing is that Hillary legally circumvents FEC contribution laws by exploiting this loophole (or whatever one wants to call it). On top of that she brags about it as "supporting Democrats down ticket" even while the WP rightly suggests she's the one benefiting from this (and DWS, as it's being used to pay off DNC debt). Before the Hillary Victory Fund, the money she is receiving directly from the Hillary Victory Fund would of had to go to a superPAC or at least stay within the DNC, as it would be in excess of the $2,700 limit for candidates. I was attempting to show you what that means. Let's try again this way. By those donors giving a $300k check to her at an event, then her handing it to her campaign staff, then her campaign staff handing the check to her HVF staff (in at least one case, that's the same person), the HVF staff can then legally hand the check back to Hillary to spend however she pleases. Which is precisely what I just showed you, with pictures and everything.* Are you refuting that it's happening or are you trying to say that because it's legal that I should use different words to describe it? EDIT: *I hope you realize that's a simplification. Obviously they have to do the normal accounting for donations but I used the check to illustrate the absurdity of it. No, she can't, and you're writing fiction about a non-existent loophole. As I said before, the source and amount of donations are tracked. Because of that, there is a money trail that is very easy to follow for the FEC, which has all these records. She can't pump money into her campaign by breaking the max, unless you're suggesting that she's taking big chunks of money and committing fraud by breaking it up into smaller fake donations. It would be stupid and blatantly obvious, and looking at it Hillary really doesn't need the money right now. There is no evidence and no real motive. There could be better separation of powers between HVF since it's embedded in the Clinton campaign. However, I'm sure that it has been properly firewalled off, and it definitely has financial controls like separate accounts at a minimum. The worst violation I see is the campaign overallocating expenses to the fund for stuff like salary, though then you get into shades of grey like "HVF duties make up 20% of this employee's responsibilities (however that is defined), but they are being paid 40% out of the fund which is improper etc. etc." How... Ill try to say this very simply. The HVA can give Hillary as much money as it wants, see that they have already given her $4 million+. She can raise money for the HVA. So instead of writing a $33k dollar check to Hillary's campaign, they write it to the HVA. The HVA takes it and divides it. The first chunk fills the FEC limit to Hillary. The next chunk gets dumped into the HVA. The HVA piles up those donations, then hands them back to Hillary to spend as if they were standard campaign donations. So they aren't added to the maxed out total of the person who gave the HVA and Hillary money, instead they are counted as coming from HVA even though HVA was just serving as a pass-through for the donation that the Hillary campaign can't legally accept directly from the original donor. Her campaign staff is the HVA staff, the treasurer is the COO of her campaign. So yes it's all legal with separate accounts and such, that was never my point although you seem insistent on arguing that instead of what I am telling you. As for the tracking, there's several reasons why you can't find anything showing you how much money the Hillary campaign, of the ~$23M they raised last month, or any other month for that matter, came from the HVA. But again that would just be for us, as I've already said several times, there's nothing the FEC could do anyway because using the HVF as a pass through for large donations (while pretty unethical and not great PR) is totally legal. Is that not clear enough? And how is the HVF piling money together and putting it into the Hillary campaign's general funds without it being illegal and obvious? Because it would be both illegal and obvious. Money is tracked and moving it through a couple different hands doesn't change the original source or magically exempt it from limits. If Soros gives 353K and it's moved through the HVF it doesn't magically become magical money that magically appeared in the HVF account-- money is fungible, but the amounts are accounted for. A money trail can be hidden in laundering cases because an auditor does not have all the financial docs, but the FEC does have all the financial docs. If campaigns were companies, they'd be the most financially transparent on Earth, they basically publish their general ledgers every month. No one cares about this because it's a non-issue built on a misunderstanding of accounting and campaign finance. Let's try it this way. Let's look at the Clooney dinner. The "fundraising expenses" can be paid by the HVF as it's actually their event (they being Hillary's Campaign staff) instead of the Clinton Campaign paying the expenses, which do you think her staff chooses? Tadaa, you've turned Soros $300k check into paying for a Clooney fundraiser for your campaign, and it's all legal. Sure, and the money from that fundraiser goes to HVF. The first $2700 goes to the Clinton campaign as allowed but the vast majority goes to state parties and the DNC. None of us know how expenses are allocated-- perhaps the Clinton campaign itself pays a proportion in line with the percentage of proceeds they get from their general accounts and the HVF accounts pay the rest, and/or Clinton makes an "in kind" contribution to account for her campaign's portion of expense instead of putting in cash. It's a two birds one stone/ everyone wins scenario where Clinton raises a bunch of money for herself and the party. God forbid, Clinton has raised money for those downballot candidates. Your argument has gone from Clinton is laundering 300K donations through HVF to the HVF uses HVF funds to pay for HVF events... and Clinton potentially, maybe generates some benefits from it. It was all perfectly legal, and at worst Hillary has avoided spending a little cash in this particular scenario. You're now making a mountain out of a molehill which we're not even sure is really there. this is about big money in politics. I assume by your posts that you don't care about the top 1 percent controlling out elections but GH does. Thats why its a big deal. yes its perfectly legal loopholes but you have to agree that there is some reason this money is being donated, even if its a "gee I like you so much I'll give you hundreds of thousands of dollars". Will money get into politics no matter what rules we give them otherwise? Yes. Would money in politics not matter if more people voted? Yes. Would money in politics not matter if it was encouraged and made fully visible? Yes. If you want to affect which politicians are in power--vote. The only thing big money does is advertise more. If people always voted their minds anyway then no amount of advertisement would change it. Sure if every eligible voter is perfectly engaged and perfectly knowledgeable, we don't need to about care how people campaign for office. GH's point is pretty strenuous at best, but your arguments has little value in the real word.
You mean making voting a federal mandated holiday while also giving tax incentives to people who vote in order to force a bump in voter participation is less realistic than magically telling rich people that they can't spend their money and assuming rich people won't simply do it under the table?
Please enlighten me.
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The difference is the nations had the capability to pay that money instead of after a 4 year war like in ww1. Reperations wasn't anything new before bismark and it only ended after it was such a disaster in ww1.
Biased vision.
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Looks like the allegations about the falsified ISIS intelligence reports are about to get worse:
Two senior intelligence analysts at U.S. Central Command say the military has forced them out of their jobs because of their skeptical reporting on U.S.-backed rebel groups in Syria, three sources with knowledge of their claim told The Daily Beast. It’s the first known instance of possible reprisals against CENTCOM personnel after analysts accused their bosses of manipulating intelligence reports about the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in order to paint a rosier picture of progress in the war.
One of the analysts alleging reprisals is the top analyst in charge of Syria issues at CENTCOM. He and a colleague doubted rebels’ capabilities and their commitment to U.S. objectives in the region. The analysts have been effectively sidelined from their positions and will no longer be working at CENTCOM, according to two individuals familiar with the dispute, and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The analysts’ skeptical views put them at odds with military brass, who last year had predicted that a so-called moderate opposition would make up a 15,000-man ground force to take on ISIS in its self-declared caliphate. An initial $500 million program to train and arm those fighters failed spectacularly. And until the very end, Pentagon leaders claimed the operation was more or less on track. Lawmakers called the plan a “joke” when Gen. Lloyd Austin, the CENTCOM commander, finally testified last September that there were just “four or five” American-trained fighters in Syria.
Source.
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We tried to use a group of savages. Turned out to be a group of savages. What a surprise.
Edit: It is bizarre how open this whole situation is. It truly is "the media against Trump"
6 Talk Radio Hosts, on a Mission to Stop Trump in Wisconsin
MILWAUKEE — Charlie Sykes, a popular talk radio host here and leader of the “Stop Trump” movement, had spent months hammering Donald J. Trump on his show, calling him a “whiny, thin-skinned bully” and dismissing his supporters as “Trumpkins.”
If Trump loses, and he feels like there is a hint of illegitimacy to his defeat, he will run third party. No doubt in my mind. Why is the GOP trying so hard to make sure he runs as a third party?
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On April 05 2016 06:10 Mohdoo wrote:
We tried to use a group of savages. Turned out to be a group of savages. What a surprise.
On the bright side, they had 4-5 times more people trained than I thought they would.
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EPT
